Three Man Army - A Third of a Lifetime 1971

The first Three Man Army album, despite its confidently trio-based title, actually teamed Paul Gurvitz and Adrian Gurvitz with several different drummers, including Buddy Miles, Spooky Tooth's Mike Kellie, and Vanilla Fudge's Carmine Appice. Though the Gurvitzes could mimic the cliches of early-'70s hard rock, their material was ordinary to the point of dullness, and their guitar soloing was stereotypical almost to the point of unwitting self-parody. Many British bands in the Led Zeppelin-Deep Purple spectrum did this stuff better. There were occasional glimmers of something that went outside the genre's narrowest bounds -- a bit of pop harmonizing in "Three Man Army," acoustic guitar flavorings for "Agent Man" and "See What I Took," blues-soul organ improvisation in "Midnight," a strange lyrical grounding for "Butter Queen" ("if your name is Barbara, how come they call you butter queen?" they ask rhetorically). The two best tracks were the least typical -- "Together" is much more Beatlesque early-'70s rock with a hippie attitude (and a synthesizer) than it is hard rock, and "A Third of a Lifetime" is a genuinely pretty orchestrated instrumental ballad. AMG.

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